Gifting Abstraction establishes an intimate economy within Soho20Chelsea gallery in which abstract objects have not yet turned into objectified commodities. The gift economy paradigm recognizes that there is value outside market forces, and that the gift renders forces and riches of its own. One of the perplexing aspects of the gift is that while its effect cannot be quantified, its intention is generally palpable: at its best, the gift generates a sense of interconnectedness. In this exhibition, artists’ labor stretches beyond the works themselves, as connective lines are symbolically rendered through the gifting process onto a relational dimension.

Gifting Abstraction questions the idea that abstract works are inextricably bound to the marketplace and therefore to a larger discourse of individualism. Abstraction has been construed as standing in direct opposition to the “relational aesthetics” theorized by Nicolas Bourriaud: “It seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our neighbors in the present than to bet on happier tomorrows.” Bourriaud implicitly pits object-based art practices such as abstract painting – which he associates with the notion of (failed) utopias – against what he calls “microtopia,” a provisional, DIY, relational approach to art.